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Reclaim the high ground in case of Omar Khadr

As the detention of Canadian citizen Omar Khadr continues with no end in sight, and without objection from Ottawa, the Canadian government is increasingly forced to defend the Bush administration's tragic policies at Guantanamo Bay: indefinite detention, harsh interrogation and sham military commissions.

Omar Khadr has been detained at a military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for the past six years. (August 12, 2008) (CP FILE PHOTO)

By Muneer I. Ahmad

Fri., Aug. 24, 2007

As the detention of Canadian citizen Omar Khadr continues with no end in sight, and without objection from Ottawa, the Canadian government is increasingly forced to defend the Bush administration's tragic policies at Guantanamo Bay: indefinite detention, harsh interrogation and sham military commissions.

But it is not too late for Canada to claim the moral high ground. In fact, it would be reclaiming it, because the government's first response to Khadr's capture, five years ago, was the right one. It is time to return to that position, and to finally dissociate Canada from the immorality and illegality of Guantanamo.

The story of Omar Khadr is by now familiar: A Canadian citizen by birth, at the age of 15 he was captured in July 2002 by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. His capture followed a firefight in which he was seriously wounded (U.S. forces dropped two 500-pound bombs on the house he was in), and in which he is accused of having thrown a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier.

Soon after his capture, he was sent to Guantanamo Bay, where he has remained ever since, subject to prolonged solitary confinement, harsh interrogations and treatment that many believe amounts to torture. Twice the U.S. has put him before a legally suspect military commission, and both times those proceedings have been halted.

In a remarkable story in the Star, Michelle Shephard reports that soon after learning of Khadr's capture, then-foreign affairs minister Bill Graham issued a press release stating, "It is an unfortunate reality that juveniles are too often the victims in military actions and that many groups and countries actively recruit and use them in armed conflicts and in terrorist activities."

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It went on to say, "Canada is working hard to eliminate these practices, but child soldiers still exist, in Afghanistan, and in other parts of the world."

The message was clear: The teenaged Canadian, picked up by U.S. armed forces in a place of armed conflict, was properly viewed as a child soldier. By invoking the child soldier framework, Canada was implicitly calling for the special protection of its juvenile citizen that international law requires.

As the first signatory of a UN convention on child soldiers, Canada knew well what the implications of this position were: Khadr should have been removed from the conflict zone, rehabilitated and returned to Canada. Under international law, he was entitled to age-appropriate treatment, which should have barred his detention among adults, his prolonged periods of solitary confinement, and the countless, brutal interrogations of him.

Sadly, Graham's principled position was soon overtaken by post-Sept. 11 politics of fear, as a government media director advised that Foreign Affairs put out a new press message to "claw back on the fact that he is a minor." Sure enough, that's what happened, and the Canadian government has abandoned Khadr to the lawless brutality of Guantanamo ever since.

Long after all the Britons, French and Australians have been released, Khadr remains the only citizen of a NATO country at Guantanamo. While countries like Kuwait have succeeded in obtaining the release of all their citizens, and Great Britain and Germany have advocated for the release of even non-citizen residents of their countries, Canada has acquiesced to the indefinite detention and abuse of its young citizen.

Perhaps Canada thought it would give its ally the benefit of the doubt, thus accepting American representations that Khadr and the other detainees were being treated humanely, and trusting that he would one day be given a fair trial. Or perhaps the public hostility toward the Khadr family (largely brought upon themselves), convinced the government that the political costs of returning Khadr to Canada might be greater than those of leaving him at Guantanamo.

Whatever the case, the record of moral and legal failure of Guantanamo is now unambiguously clear. The International Committee of the Red Cross has described conditions there as "tantamount to torture." FBI agents have complained of gross mistreatment of detainees. Khadr himself has made detailed – and unrefuted – allegations of torture.

And the sham military commission system that the Bush administration constructed solely for non-U.S. citizens (U.S. citizen terror suspects get a full trial in regular federal courts) has already been invalidated once as a violation of international and U.S. law.

It appears that Canada has been sucker-punched by the U.S. into believing that Guantanamo is fair and humane. Even sitting members of the Bush administration don't believe this. And increasingly, neither do Canadians. In recent months, we've seen five former foreign ministers (including Graham) call for the government to speak out on Khadr's behalf, and dozens of parliamentarians and legal academics doing the same. Just last week, the Canadian Bar Association demanded Khadr's repatriation.

It is time for Canada to return to its roots, to reject the lawlessness of Guantanamo, and to re-assert its principled position of fair treatment for Khadr.

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